In a stark reminder that war spares nothing - not even tennis memorabilia - Ukrainian tennis player Dayana Yastremska revealed that her family's flat in Odesa was obliterated by a Russian airstrike. "This is what the 'Russian world' looks like. A direct hit by a Kalibr cruise missile," she wrote on social media, sharing an image of a burning multi-storey residential building. Because nothing says "special military operation" quite like targeting apartment blocks.

The 26-year-old athlete, who reached the semifinals of the Australian Open in 2024 and is currently ranked 113th in the world, added a particularly poignant detail: "The only thing that survived was a Roland Garros... towel." She posted a photo of the iconic orange clay-court towel from the Paris Grand Slam, hanging incongruously from the wreckage. "A Russian missile destroyed our apartment in Odesa... SYMBOLIC. A piece of world tennis survived a Russian missile. Our home did not," she wrote on Instagram on Saturday, tagging the WTA and ITF with the plea: "Look at these images through our eyes."

Odesa regional head Oleh Kiper reported that the Friday night missile and drone attack on Odesa and nearby Chornomorsk injured 37 people, including a baby, and left two missing. The assault is part of a pattern: last year, Ukrainian international football midfielder Heorhiy Sudakov said his Kyiv flat was severely damaged by a Russian drone while his wife and child were inside. Because apparently, in this war, even athletes' homes are fair game - unless you count a surviving tennis towel as a win.